4 Dissertationen und Habilita- tionen / Dissertations and Habilitations

VERANSTALTUNGSBERICHTE RECENT CONFERENCES
International Workshop: “The Middle East from
below – Dynamics of Subversion”, Centrum für
Nah- und Mittelost-Studien (CNMS), Universität
Marburg, 8. – 10.12.2011
This international workshop represents a prelude to a
series of workshops that will be hosted over the coming
years within the framework of the Marburg University
research group, “Triumph of subversion? The
end of mass ideologies, and new oppositional dynamics
in the Middle East and North Africa.” It forms part
of interdisciplinary research focusing on processes of
individualization and new forms of oppositional dynamics
in the Middle East and North Africa. Conveners
were Albrecht Fuess (Islamic Studies), Rachid
Ouaissa (Middle Eastern Politics), and the laureate of
the Leibnizpreis, Friederike Pannewick (Arabic Studies),
of the CNMS in Marburg.
The apparent absence of organized mass ideologies
in the ongoing social upheavals in the Middle East
and North Africa is remarkable. Nationalism and
Islamism were not the driving forces behind the mass
protests. Instead, a new ideational orientation of actors,
emphasizing individual desiderata – such as
freedom, human dignity, and social equality – has
figured prominently in the midst of the new developments.
Processes of individualized opposition have
been taking place under the surface in these regions
for years. Various groups of social actors including
intellectuals, artists, youth, and women have been
engaged in subverting the dominant political, social,
and cultural conceptions. In contrast to previous mass
movements based on a collective consciousness, recent
dynamics of resistance are characterized by individual,
non-hierarchical, spontaneous actions and
behavior.
This workshop aimed to address issues of individualized
opposition – which is constantly subverting not
only political, but also social and cultural authoritarian
systems – through providing theoretical lectures
and discussions in connection with presenting empirical
case studies.
The workshop started with a keynote speech entitled
“The Arab street as political sphere” by Asef Bayat
(Urbana-Champaign, IL). Based on his book Life as
politics (2009), he sketched out the main questions of
the workshop. The Arab street is considered to be a
space of deliberate political action (as we have seen
during the Arab Spring), a space of everyday life
(leisure activities, consumption, etc.), and a space of
artistic intervention (graffiti, street art, etc.). He shed
light on various meanings of the political street, and
street politics especially of women, youth, and the
urban poor.
The first section focused on the political as a term
much discussed in contemporary political and cultural
theory. Referring back to these approaches, it was
highlighted that the notion of the political must be
understood as a dynamic of collective dissent that
criticizes the prevailing order. Thus, the term is directly
linked with other terms such as opposition,
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resistance and subversion. It is therefore of distinct
interest for the recent developments in the Middle
East in that it offers an analytical dimension for (a)
everyday practices of resistance, and (b) aesthetic
resistance.
As theoretical input, Oliver Flügel-Martinsen (Bielefeld)
presented a paper on the notion of the political
rooted in the philosophical thought of Hannah Arendt,
Claude Lefort and Jacques Rancière, with a special
emphasis on the emancipatory perspectives they offer
and the problems following from their attempts to
understand emancipatory politics and democracy as
modes of radically transforming institutions.
In the case study that followed, Lisa Wedeen (Chicago)
provided critical insight into one topical example
of dissident unrest. Her argumentation emanated
from international astonishment as to why the populations
of Syria’s two major cities, Aleppo and Damascus,
have yet to mobilize in significant numbers, except
to publicly demonstrate their support for the
president. Recognizing the problems with notions of
“legitimacy” undergirding analyses of Syria and
elsewhere, she considered the role ideology plays in
generating support and managing the terms within
which much dissent does take place.
In her contribution, Hanan Toukan (London) focused
on how “the political as dissent” is reflected in
contemporary Arab art, and the role international
funding institutions play in processes of cultural production.
Taking the Lebanese art scene as a paradigmatic
example, Toukan showed how protest, resistance
and conceptions of freedom sometimes end
up being shaped by hegemonic forces. This, she argued,
is especially true of those groupings most celebrated
by the circuits of global capital – a phenomenon
with far-reaching implications in considering the
aesthetics of resistance emergent from the Arab world
in its current revolutionary moment.
The second session was dedicated to “individualization
as opposition.” In the Middle East, the term “individualization”
is hardly ever used when talking
about societal or political transformations. Even
though a number of studies deal implicitly with the
matter (e.g., in the field of gender), these are not embedded
into a broader theoretical framework on individualization.
This session shed light on several aspects
of Western individualization theory and discussed
the concept’s usefulness in relation to the
Middle East.
Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (Leipzig) reminded the audience
that individualization theory constitutes a strand
of modernization theory and as such, it is important to
disentangle it from related concepts such value
change and social differentiation. She distinguished
between individualization on the levels of structure
(social differentiation), person (detaching the person
from a determining context), and culture (change of
ideas, values, and ideologies). Monika Wohlrab-Sahr
noted that the wave of individualization theory since
the 1980s, in which Ulrich Beck has featured prominently,
in many points referred to arguments that were